University Music Educators Creating Piano-Learning Environments in Finnish Primary School Teacher Education

Abstract

The importance of supportive learning environments has been considered of utmost importance. In Finnish universities where the educational entities are being re-organised, teacher educators have to reconsider and also reorganise the learning environments to sustain the quality of teaching. At the Universities of Helsinki and Lapland, where the primary school student teachers' music programmes are under serious pressure, a large scale research project "Arctic Reformative and Exploratory Teaching Profession" (ArkTop), was launched, aiming to support teachers' lifelong professional development by organizing research based in-service courses, thus, providing possibilities for cooperation and creating networks between universities and comprehensive schools in Lapland through shared expertise, critical reflections and research. Part of this project focuses on different possibilities for developing music, including piano courses in primary school teacher education. In this particular study, the issues of piano-learning environments are examined. The study focuses on mapping the main problems and finding possible solutions in music programmes for creating supportive piano-learning environments in primary school teacher education by analysing topic-specific curricular documents of both universities and the interview data drawn from a number of lecturers. In order to create the best possible learning environments, it is essential to explore how university music educators comprehend the opportunities for designing piano-learning environments.

Education and Music Culture in the Context of Web 2.0

“…It is almost impossible to find research related exclusively to online or mobile music education at a professional level. Researchers unanimously agree that professional training in this area requires classical classroom learning, face-to-face contact with teachers, mentoring, as well as direct contact with physical tools and equipped classrooms [15,29]. Blended learning allows students to significantly improve results and academic performance, and also much earlier integrates them into the professional and creative life.…”

Student teachers’ and teacher educators’ pedagogical reflections on piano courses in Finnish primary school teacher education

“…Within the ArkTOP project, music-related research was directed toward finding new pedagogical ideas for music studies. Previously, music studies in the project have reported upon teacher educators’ provision of blended learning opportunities to meet students’ needs (Sepp et al, 2019), and student teachers’ self-efficacy in blended learning environments in piano courses (Sepp et al, 2018). The aim of this study was to identify the pedagogical thinking levels of primary school student teachers and teacher educators, through analyzing their reflections about the teaching and learning processes while involved in piano courses.…”

A Web-based Music Learning Environment: A Case Study of Users Experiences

“…The use of digital learning environments in music education has increased and developed rapidly in recent years. Finnish teacher educators have studied the use of web-based learning environments in music education and developed blended learning settings for it (Ruokonen & Ruismäki, 2016a;Hietanen, Ruokonen, Ruismäki, & Enbuska, 2016;Ruokonen et al, 2017;Sepp et al, 2019). These articles have focused on studying student teachers and their web-based music learning during their teacher education programme.…”